"That's as maybe. But a point that Jim Carrol made earlier is important; all kinds of music goes on in Ireland and excellent world-class traditional folk music is part of that and is extremely popular with the general public."
I live in Ireland, that in my opinionthat is partly true but is an over simplification.
country and western is more popular,
within trad music unusual phnomena appear, there are very few folk clubs, there are a lot of venues where music is background music, there are a few singers clubs[with strict rules about unaccompanied singing only]there are tradtional instrumental music sessions where only a small amount of singing is encouraged, so there is a divide amongst trad music of singer and instrumentalists, there are very few clubs where singer songwriters are encouraged to perform in a listening environment, most singer songwriters end up performing in pubs and end up being wall paper music, i find this sad because to me lyrics are important., the only place people listen to lyrics are in singers clubs, or the ocasional song which is a break for trad instrumentalists, all is not entirely rosy in the irish folk garden.